The exhausting side of masking
There's a particular kind of tired that high-masking ADHDers know well. It isn't the tired of a long week. It's the tired of having performed coherence for years.
Performance fatigue
Every meeting where you've held it together, every email you've rewritten three times, every moment of impulse you've quietly swallowed, has a cost. Individually small. Cumulatively enormous.
When that cost catches up, it doesn't usually look dramatic. It looks like you can't face your inbox on a Sunday evening.
The success trap
The cruel irony of high-functioning ADHD is that the better you are at masking, the less support you tend to get. People see the output, not the cost. They assume you're fine.
You might assume it too, right up until you aren't.
Recovery isn't a long weekend
Real recovery from masking burnout is structural. Different work, different rhythms, different expectations. A holiday will not fix a job that requires you to perform a version of yourself for forty hours a week.
If you're successful and quietly empty, you aren't ungrateful. You're tired in a way that rest alone won't reach.